They just upset me with their agenda-pushing garbage, so why bother?
"What's NOT in the IAEA Iran Reports" by Peter Casey
".... On July 6, 2008, Zimmerman published an opinion piece in the Boston Globe entitled "Time for Iran to Face More Sanctions," a screed that badly misuses the International Atomic Energy Agency's May 2008 report on its monitoring of Iran's nuclear power activities. In his piece, which was later republished in the International Herald Tribune, Zimmerman blatantly tries to terrify Americans about an Iranian nuclear menace that does not exist, may never exist, and poses no realistic threat whatsoever to the United States in any case. His commentary is also solid evidence that the New York Times, which owns both the Globe and the Tribune, is intent on once again disseminating the same sort of nonsense that facilitated a "case" for the Iraq invasion....
First, Zimmerman falsely depicts the IAEA's "reported questions" as relating to matters of fact. As the report itself makes clear, the questions relate to allegations based on what the IAEA calls the "alleged studies" - documentation found on a laptop computer purportedly obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies in mid-2004. (The bona fides of these laptop documents, whose origin is as murky as the infamous "Niger yellowcake" forgery, remain in substantial doubt, but that is a whole different story.)....
"Actually, there is no doubt about it at all. That incriminating laptop is thought to have originated with Mossad." -- Mike Rivero of whatreallyhappened.com
Zimmerman's recent Globe commentary concludes that "If Iran begins enriching uranium to weapons grade on an assembly-line basis, it could transfer this material to groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which might fabricate low-technology nuclear explosives. These would probably have yields nearly as high as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima."
If. Could. Might. Nuclear weapons. Assembly line. Hezbollah. Hamas. Hiroshima. Is it possible that this agitprop could have been written by the same man who wrote in August 2003 that "The president's principal argument for going to war – to prevent a 'smoking gun that would appear as a mushroom cloud' – was based on bad intelligence that was misused while good intelligence was ignored"?
Over the past five years, Peter Zimmerman appears to have taken leave of his good judgment. He now wants to persuade readers to take leave of their own. Don't. Ask the question the Zimmerman of August 2003 demanded: Is there a reason to use armed forces against Iran "to preempt or prevent an attack on this country?" And don't give those who say "yes" the benefit of any doubt.
The IAEA's reports are available on its Web site in the section "IAEA and Iran in Focus." None of them are more than nine or 10 pages. Despite their subject matter, they are written in reasonably plain English. Even if it takes a little extra effort to figure them out, that effort is essential.
There is no sign that Washington and Israel will relent any time soon from their zealous campaign to foment war with Iran. It is no time to accept at face value the media's distorted descriptions of the IAEA's work. It is no time to buy into the reckless scaremongering over the Iranian nuclear "threat" from "experts" like Zimmerman.
It is every American's civic duty to read and understand the IAEA reports themselves. If we do, Washington just might not be able to get away with another fraudulent casus belli.
--MORE--"
No one listened to Scott Ritter the first time.
